Last Friday, the FMF co-hosted an event with New American Media, CHIRLA (Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles), and various other human rights organizations (i.e, CAST-Coalition Against Sex Trafficking, Asian Pacific American Legal Center, and the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium) to discuss a popular issue in America: immigration policy.
Whenever immigration is brought up in politics, the mainstream media usually portrays xenophobic stereotypes about immigrants, particularly of men, along with politicians complaining on how they are taking away jobs and resources from American citizens. This forum, however, shattered the perceived notion of immigation and brought forth a new perspective, often forgotten in the discussion of immigration and homeland security: the immigrant woman.
Sergio Bendizen of Bendixen and Associates, with New America Media, presented their findings on immigration through a multilingual poll, and brought forth information which polls in America often overlook or dont consider. In addition, these findings also bring a woman's face to the issue. And when citizens and politicans see a face attached to an issue, more work is done to reform the problem.
For instance, according to the conducted poll, the majority of immigrants coming to America are women (51%), and almost 19 (18.9)million immigrants living in the United States right now are women. And, contrary to popular belief, few immigrants come to America for pesonal economic gain (17% of respondants), but to unite with families (38%)and provide a better life for them (22%). (Poll: http://newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=01ab6bae8ae4fa2ac4b9265608901b9e)
These findings are not only important in addressing the immigration issue, but the diversity of feminism. Through researching,we can see how these issues affect women and connect to feminism (ie, language barriers in education, access to healthcare, citizenship obstacles). And the more we understand the immigration issue from a human and feminist perspective, and not just from an economic and political standpoint, the better equipped we are to reform immigration to a more humane and gender friendly nature
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The employment-based routes for US Green Cards allow those with "extraordinary" or exceptional" ability in their field to immigrate to the US via the EB-1 visa and EB-2 visa services respectively.
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